a listening project
Honoring stories about trees
​Natural environments are woven into the history, memories, cultural heritage, and everyday life of Gullah Geechee, African American, and Indigenous people of the coastal South.
​
TREE LIFE STORY gathers stories of past and present relationships between people, trees, plants, and nature.
​
We invite all members of these communities to share their story with the world through this website, and have their recording archived in the U.S. Library of Congress.
Vision
This project was created with the mission of hearing and sharing stories from coastal Georgia’s Black, African American, Gullah Geechee, Indigenous and descendant communities, whose voices have long been silenced, excluded, misrepresented, or ignored when telling the cultural history of natural environments in coastal Georgia and neighboring states.
The goal is to help preserve, elevate, and pay tribute to the cultural and environmental histories of coastal residents and communities.
The focus on trees and plants helps us see the diversity of connections between our history, our day to day lives, and the natural environment.
​
Explore!
Browse and hear people tell stories of coastal life, culture, and history, and learn about the storytellers.
Learn about the creators of the project, our connection with the national StoryCorps Project, and our sponsors.
Sharing stories is easy! You tell the story, we record and archive it. Read more about different kinds of stories and the process.